


The Other Side

by TongueTiedandSqueamish



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alexander Hamilton: hot-headed half-blood, All pairings have about the same amount of spotlight, But a rather tame one, F/M, Fae AU, John Laurens: token human, M/M, POV Multiple, Rarepairs ahoy!, Washington & Angelica are the King & Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TongueTiedandSqueamish/pseuds/TongueTiedandSqueamish
Summary: Aaron Burr always hid, Alexander Hamilton always burned, James Madison always coughed, Angelica Schuyler always knew, George Washington always thundered, Thomas Jefferson always gardened, Maria Lewis always flinched, and Theodosia always changed. This is how things have always been and will always be.





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelittlelion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlelion/gifts).



> More than two years ago at this point, I asked thelittlelion what she'd like as a gift for her superb writing, and despite those several years passing, I did eventually finish this. Most of it has been written and sitting in a doc but I never wrote the last bit, so if it seems a little stilted or strange compared to the rest, that's why. I thought, hey, maybe I should actually finish something I start for once.

 

 

**I. Betrothal**

The wind whistled a chime through the tree branches, the leaves applauded in flutters, the birds sang in harmony, and the air itself brightened in delight as the King and Queen stood before the stretch of their subjects. They made a striking pair, Burr thought, as he always did when he witnessed the two of them together, full of power and grace. The King’s steps rumbled as he shifted, and the Queen’s gaze pierced, all-knowing. Around Burr, everyone smiled and clapped and yelled, raising their drinks or downing them prematurely, jabbing each other in the sides with elbows, while Burr remained quiet. Without the mob’s attention settled on him, the large numbers and endless noise discomfited him, not happy enough to join the whooping, not patriotic enough to shout praise to their rulers. Next time, he should draft a blissful potion and drink it beforehand so he could flow with the masses. As it was, he endeavored to appear neutral, if not content.

“Quiet!” the King boomed, silencing the crowd near instantly, except for a few snickers and a mock-serious “yes, sir!” and “ _oui_ , _mon général_ ” from the front. The King ignored them. “Greetings, all. Today, we commemorate—” Another round of joyous hollering rose, cutting him off until it was forced down by his thunderous stomg, sending quakes in the ground. The Queen laid a hand on his arm to smooth his disapproving frown and strode forward to address the crowd herself. “Despite the centuries we live and how time eludes us, sustaining our vitality and our beauteous figures—” A flicker of movement caught Burr’s eye, a flash from light to dark to light again. He glanced back to the Queen. “—our world is nevertheless in constant flux. To find consistency, to find reliability is—” Burr ducked around the heads of the fae surrounding him until he caught another glimpse of it, of a woman sliding away, slipping through the shadows of others with her head lowered. He glanced back to the Queen. “—companionship is plentiful, but to find a bond, a true and lasting bond—” His feet followed the woman’s path, parting the bodies with ease, not passing through shadows but passing unnoticed in the mimicry of one. She skirted past the last man and disappeared into the shade of the treeline, as the Queen went on. “—souls grow, as inconstant as us. Whatever whimsies exist have arranged and sang themselves to me, as they are wont to—”

Burr stepped away from the gathering, careful not to disturb the leaflitter underfoot as he drifted forward on short silent steps. “Miss?” A tiny crushed sob came from behind a tree that appeared too thin for a person to stand behind unseen, and a voice quavered, “Go away.”

Behind, the Queen’s voice rose. “Today, we commemorate a betrothal. A betrothal ordained by whimsies beyond even our immortal hands, the twining together of two souls for the betterment of themselves and our society as a whole.”

“Are you all right, miss?” Burr questioned, sidling closer.

“It _hurts_ ,” the woman strangled out, breath coming in harsh gasps. With a cry of pain, she stumbled out of the tree’s shadow and to the ground, curling upon herself in the leaves and dirt, hair flared around her, covering her face, hands scrabbling for purchase, shaking.

Burr opened his mouth to ask what was wrong when her hand stilled and he saw it: a sickly black bruise around her wrist that pulsed a faint green. A sharp twist in his stomach brought bile to the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down. Careful, careful, as if moving a fragile sprout, he gathered the woman in his arms and said in his calmest, smoothest tone, “You’ve been cursed, miss. You need immediate assistance.”

The woman shook her head weakly, hair sliding from her face to reveal another horrible, deathly bruise on her cheek, the same glow that reeked of disease, the kind that crawled into Burr’s mind and tempted him to scream. “No, no, no,” the woman murmured, broken and weak, echoing Burr’s thoughts. “No, he’ll—he’ll—” She sobbed again and dissolved into incoherency.

He stood and prepared to set off at a jog when the crowd soared into the largest, most enthusiastic applause yet; Burr startled and turned for only a moment, long enough to see the Queen join two hands with a brilliant smile. “Congratulations!” she announced, and even from more than a hundred feet away, Burr could see her amusement as she stepped away and encouraged the bewildered, offended two to step closer to one another, which they did reluctantly with matching disdainful glares. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Burr forgot himself for a moment and _laughed_ at the sheer incongruity of it, and then a pained noise from the woman flushed him with guilt for pausing, and he hurried on his way.

 

 

**II. Escape**

Alexander fled from the announcement the moment the Queen released him with a murmured “I swear to the sky I had no clue it would be the two of you,” though she hardly acted _regretful_ or _pitying_ as she ought to have been, since he, Alexander Hamilton, had been publicly betrothed to Thomas Jefferson; the first ordained betrothal since the King and Queen millennia ago! The thought of he and smug, pretentious Jefferson united in the same intricate, endless way as Washington and Angelica was ludicrous, outrageous, fantastical beyond any feat his fellow fae could manage. It was—

Sparks burst from Alexander’s fingers and showered down onto the foliage and his own clothing. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he patted off the errant sparks and pushed his vitriolic magic back from pulsing in his fingertips to humming in the palms of his hands. Today would be the worst possible time for another incident. Jefferson would pout about a little patch of singed forest, pronounce it a sign the betrothal was not meant to be, and further twist it to exile Hamilton once and for all. Alexander kept a furious grip over his magic as he paced into the Old Kingdom, his mind racing thirty feet ahead of him, his options flashing before his eyes.

Wriggling out of the betrothal would be impossible, for more reasons than Alexander cared to count. With the match foreseen by Angelica herself, no one, not even he, could dispute its legitimacy, though he could and would dispute its wisdom. However, he couldn’t allow himself to accept this decree without a fight, without distance to prepare a plan and time to reconcile his fate. He needed to hide.

Who knew how to hide better than Aaron Burr?

Burr’s cottage lodged itself deep in the Old Kingdom, where the land dipped into a dark valley of gnarled, gargantuan trees with branches wide enough to block out the sun and roots large enough to host a revel within. Deserted and devoid of cheer, the woods creaked with the echoes of ancient, terrifying knowledge, whispers in forgotten tongues wisping along your ear until you relented and left. Burr had lived here alone, wedged between two of the colossal trees, since before Alexander’s birth. The cottage’s gray, warped wood matched its gloomy surroundings, and it looked a pitiful, frail thing beside the giants looming over it. Alexander hurried to its front door, steeling himself not to jump at the snap or crack of every stray noise, and knocked urgently.

Burr answered the door with his fingers stained and a splash of something noxious-smelling wetting his shirt. “No,” Burr said before Alexander opened his mouth. “I have more important business to attend to than you.”

“Like what? Madison’s health potion can—”

“A woman has been cursed,” Burr interrupted. “She is in significant pain, and I prioritize that over your romance problems, which are petty and ungrateful.” He flexed his fingers into a fist then quickly relaxed them again at his side. “It’s ordained, Alexander. Guaranteed to succeed. Do you know how many would commit treason to be in your place?”

He slammed the door on Alexander’s half-formed words, leaving him red in the face with impotent anger. He clamped down on another burst of sparks, his magic hissing and scratching at his frayed nerves to be let _out_. One command, and the cottage would be set alight.

A dignified chuckle above him dumped frigid water on that pleasant fantasy; he jerked up to find the sound, expecting Angelica to be looking down at him in her smug way, and melting in relief when he instead met Theodosia’s eyes. His temper flared back up in an instant. “Did you hear him?” he demanded, gesturing towards the door.

She laughed again and sprang to her feet, dainty as a fawn. She stood on a root some twenty feet high and skipped down precarious hand- and footholds without a care. All fae had a grace to them that guided their steps into pleasing fluidity, and each had a unique sort. Burr’s flowed like clear water, Lafayette’s blew like a sharp wind, Eliza’s softened like a lullaby, and Theodosia’s pranced like a fawn, ever energetic. “I did,” the woman replied, landing with a neat _thump_. “He isn’t wrong.”

Alexander scoffed. “You’re obligated to say that.”

The woman before him was as tall as he, hair held in a loose puff at the back of her head, her shoulders sloped and her hips wide, her cheekbones angular and harsh in a stunning way, her eyes laughing whenever her mouth was not. In steady but rapid increments, her face softened into childish roundness, her hips straightened and her breasts flattened, her height fell to his stomach, and when she smiled wide up at him with gaps in her teeth, she remained elegant and beautiful despite the indignity of the missing pieces. “Just because I love him doesn’t mean I think he’s perfect,” the child said, beaming. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Especially not him,” Alexander groused, his lips failing not to twitch into a smile.

“You’re one to talk!” Theodosia said. She paused, then glanced between the cottage and Alexander curiously. “You wanted to hide, right?”

“It sounds cowardly when you whisper it like that. It’s a tactical retreat, no cowardice in that.”

Theodosia stuffed her knuckles into her mouth to keep from snorting, and then began to skip backwards, away from Alexander and the cottage. “Whatever you wanna call it. I know just the place.”

“You do?”

Theodosia grinned and nodded.

 

 

**III. Visitor**

James frowned at the untouched reflection of the scrying pool, checking the wards humming in the ground around it. Once, twice, thrice, one ward glowed hot and visible under his touch. A simple detection ward that tripped when a being passed through the pool to the other side. One person.

“You’re certain?” Washington had rumbled, and James had nodded with reluctance. Washington sighed, rubbing his temple with a blunt thumb. “Alex is missing. Madison, you know what I must ask of you then?” James had known.

That confirmed, James checked his pack for the last time as well. A sheathed sword at his hip, courtesy of Lafayette, an old vial from Burr as he felt the beginnings of that damnable cough aching in his throat again, a letter from the King and Queen requesting Alexander’s return (though James questioned the efficacy of that method), and a coil of fireproof rope, one of the many fireproof trinkets James had charmed after Hamilton’s first accidental arson as a child. Thomas still complained that that patch of garden refused to speak to him without sweet-talking.

James checked the glamour Mulligan fashioned for him not an hour ago, admiring the callouses on the fingers and the lace fringe on the drab sleeve. “No fucking idea how humans dress,” Mulligan had said, “but Alex’s dad wore something like this, yeah? Except I made it better, of course.”

James gazed into the scrying pool for one more moment. The pool showed a camp of sharp-ribbed humans in ragged uniforms awakening, packing up supplies, and beginning to march away, guns clenched in their fists. It seemed a waste. Human lives, already short, cut shorter by squabbling. With death biting at their heels since birth, did their lives weigh less in their hands? Did they feel expendable, interchangeable?

James shuddered and stepped in.

~~~~~

Humans were odd beings. They loved boundaries. They spoke in hierarchies, and denoted the land by their creations upon it. They loved names, names for everything, including their beloved boundaries. James passed through asking after Hamilton without fuss but garnering plenty of strange looks. Mostly they called him “sir.” One human had sized him up, grinned with rotten teeth, and said, “You look like one of them fancy plantation bastards. One of those good-for-nothing layabouts.” At James’ mystified stoicism, the human erupted in laughter, and James took the distraction as excuse for escape.

Several days in, after another unsuccessful bout of questioning with the man who owned the local social hub known as an inn, the human warned him two armies were drawing close nearby and that the roads would be dangerous for traveling with the raiding and looting “that lot” brought with them. “There was even a brush fire a bit back.”

James perked up. “Brush fire?”

“Yeah, damnedest thing. It’s September, not July! Suppose it happens though, ’specially ’round that lot of marauders. Nothing but trouble.”

Of _course_ Alexander had gone off to fight in a petty human war. That ridiculous, reckless human half of him must have been begging for the slaughter.

James sighed and walked on.

~~~~~

“You have to help him!” Alexander shouted, dragging along an unconscious human covered in blood.

James handed over Burr’s unused cough remedy to Alexander without thinking, occupied with the disconcerting problem that some redcoated soldier had shot James in the chest and ruined his glamour. In the thick of battle, no one glanced towards him, but he wouldn’t be able to walk through the towns anymore.

He tugged Hamilton into a retreat, away from the screaming soldiers and blaring guns and the swift swords – James had forgotten completely he had a blade himself – away into the trees.

Alexander fed the potion down the unmoving human’s throat. Within a minute, his eyes shot open with a violent gasp, the wound in his stomach nothing but smooth skin. The human guffawed, crazed, and grasped Hamilton’s arm. “By God, Alex, I thought I was—” The human’s eyes skittered over to James and he abruptly lost his breath, his jaw dropped open. “I, uh – um, Alex, who—? Uh . . .”

James ignored his gaping and focused on Alexander. “It’s time to return home.”

The half-fae scowled, obstinance for obstinancy’s sake.

James waited.

“Fine,” Hamilton huffed. “Most of these people are idiots, anyway. The rebels could have these Redcoats driven off within a handful of battles if they had any sense.” He glanced at the human. “Except for you, Laurens.”

The calling of his name snapped the human out of his stupor and he swiveled back to Alexander with confusion. “Home? You mean the West Indies? But Alex, what about the Revolution? What about—”

“Apologies, Mr. Laurens,” James interrupted, sliding a loop of rope around the human’s wrists and cinching a knot tight before he could react, working to do the same to his feet.

“What the hell? Get this off of me this instant! Alex!”

“Is it really necessary to tie him up?”

“Whoever the fuck you are, I don’t care about how gorgeous you are, when I get out of this I’m punching you right in the face!”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Alex?!”

“Sorry, John, but you can’t exactly follow us back.”

James narrowed his eyes at Alexander’s compliance but decided not to question his good fortune as he shuffled them off towards the scrying pool. It didn’t matter if the human followed them, after all. The only way for a human to cross into the land of the fae was to be given a gift by one of them, and they had given the human nothing.

Still, James tried to ignore Alexander’s smirk.

 

 

**IV. Announcement**

When Angelica woke to Peggy standing beside her bed, the flowering vine curtain swept to the side, she waved her sister off. “No need, no need, I know,” she said.

Peggy pretended to pout, then grinned brighter than the dawn peeking over the horizon. “I swear, one day I’ll catch you by surprise. Hurry up then, everyone’s already buzzing about it.” She disappeared, allowing the curtain to swing back into place and cast the bed into a dim, green-tinted calm. The top was open to the sky, pink crawling across star-softened navy blue. Despite her sister’s insistence, she knew she had a minimum of five minutes before she would be forced to rise, so she rolled over to George’s relaxed face and drew his arm back around her waist.

King George Washington grumbled an unintelligible complaint and pulled her closer. She breathed a laugh and traced the edge of his jawline, circling around his temple. “When was the last time any of us met a human?”

A delicate furrow formed between George’s eyebrows. He mumbled something in answer without quite moving his lips, a vibration in his throat rather than a sound.

“Over a century, I believe, when James Hamilton left when Alexander was a child,” Angelica answered herself.

George chuffed in disapproval, the furrow deepening.

“I know.” Angelica pitched her voice low in imitation of his. “‘ _The scoundrel!_ ’”

A smiled spread slow, livening his features until his eyes cracked open. “There’s a human?” he murmured, thick and deep from sleep.

“What can I say? Like mother, like son.” Angelica stroked a thumb over his cheekbone, encouraging him to smile wider. One of Angelica’s favorite hobbies was to suss out those rare, rare grins of George’s. “Though Madison was more careless than he imagined himself to be.”

“I wasn’t aware Madison knew the meaning of the word ‘careless.’”

“He pretends he doesn’t.”

They lay in silence for another minute and then rose to dress with matching efficiency, snatches of future conversations whispering in Angelica’s ears – _I am sorry to cause distress, miss_ – _I’m trying to make this work, you ass_ – _I’ll die fighting_ – _I have everything I’ve always wanted_ – the tiny prophecies dulled by the rumble of George’s usual thunderous steps. She stilled as a strong vision washed over her – _Burr dancing with little Theo in his warm, firelit cottage and with every turn she grew and grew into a woman, as Maria watched with soft, weathered fondness from an armchair_ – until George pressed a hand to her shoulder and said, “Shall we?”

She focused on the comforting roll of thunder, the familiar weight of the hand, and nodded. It was these moments, those unidentifiable communications, that reminded her every day why they had married, why their marriage had been impressed upon her with such ferocious certainty, as if ripped straight from the core of the earth, as it had with Thomas and Alexander. May they be half as lucky as she had been.

From their open bedchambers held loftily in the canopy of the oldest and strongest tree in the New Kingdom, they walked down together through the spiraling halls of the trunk and into the meadow where they often presented themselves to their subjects and the supervising Congress alike. A plain stone pedestal, able to fit twenty more than the paltry two that stood atop it so often, sat in the center of the meadow, five stairs aiding the fae climbing it at each of the cardinal points. Much like last month’s betrothal, almost the entirety of the land had traveled to gawk at the human flanked by Alexander, Madison, and Jefferson. Light applause and cheering began as Angelica and George stepped into view, partially drowned out by the King’s approaching thunder. Angelica took pleasure in John Laurens’ astonishment to be standing amongst the extraordinary, amongst what appeared to be the ordinary people from his human life but infused with the ethereal loveliness of a good story, that which can never deteriorate, that which can never die, that which possesses magic yet possesses flaws, that which is inhuman by virtue of its vision of humanity.

“John Laurens,” Angelica greeted. “Welcome. Did you find the trip through the scrying pool agreeable?”

Laurens startled. “How do you know my name?”

Alexander rolled his eyes. “She’s a seer. She knows almost everything.”

“Your Excellency,” Thomas drawled out, his syllables lengthening further as his irritation snapped to the surface, “please enlighten us as to how this _remarkable_ specimen traveled here?”

Angelica ignored how Alexander’s lip curled at Thomas’ tone and said, “The health potion, given as a gift in desperate times.”

Madison averted his gaze to the ground.

The Queen and King of the fae exchanged a glance, not so much a silent conversation but an invisible dance performed a thousand occasions before, and the King turned out towards their fae subjects, clapping a hand on Laurens’ shoulder and announcing, “Let us celebrate our new arrival with a feast!”

The crowd cheered, Laurens quailed, Jefferson scowled, and Angelica nudged Madison, gesturing to Laurens. “Watch him,” she commanded, feeling satisfied for one blink of the eye as another parcel of prophecy fulfilled itself.

 

 

**V. Preparations**

The preparations began immediately. Decorations, food, entertainment – Washington tuned out the commotion as soon as the echo of his announcement faded. Peggy flitted about, carrying messages and supplies; Lafayette insisted on setting up a swordfighting contest; Eliza agreed to fill the air with cheerful dance music; all the usual.

“Go down and inform Burr of the feast,” Angelica told Washington.

He eyed her curiously. “Peggy could accomplish the same in the fraction of the time.”

“Yes, but it’s been a long while since you showed Burr any good will.” She danced a step away and shooed him off with a hand. “Go on now, before the excitement starts.”

Since Angelica knew best and it was indeed true that he could not remember the last time he had spoken a pleasant word to Burr, he conceded and turned towards the Old Kingdom.

He remembered when the dreary husk had bustled with brightness and movement as much as the New Kingdom did, when the gargantuan trees were inhabited by exotic birds and elaborate houses and fae milled, laughing and celebrating, in dappled sunshine. Washington’s steps boomed twice as loud in the emptiness, echoing back until he was almost convinced he had summoned a stormcloud without the intent to. He paused, watching the branches for a raindrop or a flicker of movement, a squirrel, an abandoned bobbing lantern light, a rustling leaf. Nothing. Washington walked on. As the cottage came into sight a few hundred feet away, a small yapping blur came barreling towards him, smacking into his legs before it could skid to a stop and then growling and barking with vicious ferocity. Its fury would have been more remarkable had its legs not been so stubby or had its bark been more intimidating than annoying.

Washington sighed. “Hello, Seabury,” he greeted the dog, who only grew more enraged at the mention of his name, hopping and snapping his teeth as if he could not contain himself. “I suppose you haven’t forgiven me?”

Seabury dug at the ground with his paws and bared his teeth.

“That would be a ‘no’ then.” Washington continued on to the cottage, followed by Seabury. One would think several centuries would cool tempers, but Seabury had been a dedicated sycophant and Washington supposed such impressive devotion could not be broken by mere time.

Accompanied by the noisy entourage of the furry nuisance and his own steps, Burr met him at the door, sour-faced. Washington inclined his head in greeting, and they spoke in awkward, cold sentences that matched the atmosphere of the Old Kingdom, ignoring Seabury’s disruptions: an exchange of pleasantries, Burr’s reassurance that the former King remained unmoving, Washington’s stilted delivery of the news of the human visitor, the invitation to the feast, the various “Your Excellency”s and “Mr. Burr”s, until—

“Aaron?”

Burr pivoted on a heel, dismissing Washington’s presence without so much as an “excuse me, sir” in favor of a woman standing in another doorway (too many walls, unnerving how closed-in Burr had built his cottage), her nails clenched sharp on the skin of her arm and her gaze fixated in horror on the King. Burr pinned Washington with a glare, an honest and malicious _glare_ , before striding to the woman’s side and gently prying her hand from her arm and held it in his, mumbling comforting words to her.

Bewildered, Washington glanced down towards Seabury in search of a mutual bafflement, finding instead the dog used Burr’s distraction to growl once more at Washington and then trotted into the room to curl up in a basket full of soft blankets, perfect for his size.

“I am—” Washington sucked in a breath, fortified himself. “I am sorry to cause distress, Miss . . .?”

“Lewis,” the woman replied, breathless with nerves and clamping down white-knuckled on Burr’s hands. “Maria Lewis, Your Excellency.”

 _Misfits_ , Washington thought, looking from Burr to Maria to Seabury. _They’re misfits_. He thought of Theodosia and her unstuck age. Alexander and his manic magic, his face too crooked to pretend to be anything less than a half-blood. For once, Burr’s politeness had crumbled into a protective clench of the jaw, challenging Washington to issue a foul word to anything he might see. The frailty of the trembling woman. The bed reserved for a voiceless, transfigured former enemy. The neatness of the cottage, potions and ingredients lined up on shelves in precise detail, as if – as if saying _I am the one thing in life I can control_.

Something twisted in Washington’s stomach. He refused to shift, refused to look away despite the profound, uncomfortable itch slicing down his back, growing in his throat like mold. “It’s lovely to meet you, Miss Lewis. I hope you can attend the feast as well.” He expected her to relax with his encouraging remarks. She did not. Frightened, tensed, on edge, every part readying itself to flee. “Yes, well . . .” Burr’s glare did not lessen either. Washington hadn’t known the potionmaker _had_ a backbone, let alone that he could use it. “I’ll be going then. Good day to you all. Mr. Burr. Miss Lewis. Seabury.”

As he walked out of the gloomy pit of the Old Kingdom, he berated himself. Millennia of experience had apparently taught him nothing but willful ignorance and indomitable pride. _Misfits_. No wonder Alexander never much cared for when he unthinkingly called him “son.”

 

 

**VI. Feast**

“What’s your name again?” John asked, feeling his mouth forming the syllables but not hearing the sounds. The impossibility around him overwhelmed his senses until they fizzled out in uneven snatches. After a minute, it occurred to him he asked a question and hadn’t paid attention to the answer. “Huh?” he said, focusing on one of those beautiful beyond expression people, the one that had tied him up and stolen off with Alexander during the Battle of Brandywine. Lord, even the inconsequential parts John never thought of were beautiful, the space between the brows, the width of the forehead, the shell of the ear, the flare of the nostrils – _right_ , his question.

“James Madison,” the man – the fairy – the fae? – said, his tone uncomfortable in its formality. Gentlemen used that tone, rich folks with rich European-imported educations like John used that tone, not otherworldly beings that could conquer countries with a smile, no need to flash their magic – their _magic_!

“Is it too late to introduce myself when the, uh, Queen did it for me?” John asked.

James shook his head.

“John Laurens. I would give you my rank, but I’m not sure you’d know what I was talking about.”

Any possible reply was lost to John as yet another dazzling sight caught his attention, and he wandered, James following. Despite the event being called a feast, the atmosphere fit a festival better. Food splayed itself on any surface that could hold it, floated in the empty air, even, but the noise and movement overran its allure, drew him here to the flowers that chimed like a harpsichord upon a touch, drew him there to a truth-and-lie game where the loser’s head turned into an animal’s, drew him anywhere as soon as it caught his eye or ear. The fae grinned at him, spoke to him like an old, fascinating relative, and attempted to shove gifts of flowers, potions, and various random objects at him. James stepped in when they grew too touchy or to reject their gifts, explaining in his quiet, formal voice that that mirror would cause memory loss, that flower meant a marriage proposal, that caged hummingbird was trained to peck out his eyes, that potion would force him to follow any command for the next hour. Were this America, John would be scared, but under the color-changing lanterns bobbing along without support, surrounded by the people he could not forget were _not_ his kind, he could only laugh. By the widening smiles of the rejected fae, this was the appropriate response. “Never a dull moment, is there?” John said after rejecting a jewelry box full of rings and bracelets charmed to sever the limbs they ensconced.

“Many, actually,” James replied with a faded smile.

“Wait until the drinks are spiked with love potion,” James continued from John’s other side.

“Love potion? That’s—” John interrupted himself, whirling around to stare between the two identical (gorgeous) men. Same clothes, same expressions, same postures, same voices. “James?” John said, an insane half-laugh stretching his face despite himself.

One of the Jameses sighed. “Let’s cease this nonsense already.”

The other raised his eyebrows, incredulous. “Me? I’m not the one who deceives for a living.”

The first broke into raucous, braying guffaws, and something vague and formless shimmered off him to reveal a stout fortress of a man in a stately blue jacket offset by yellow trimmings that glittered in the light. He slapped his hands on his knees and pulled James in by the neck for a rough, one-armed hug, waving the other at John. “Hey there, human. John, right? You been having a good time with my man Madison?”

John waved back, nodding. “He’s a good man. Fairy. Whatever.”

“Fae’s fine.” He released James to grab John’s in a vigorous, crushing handshake. “Name’s Hercules Mulligan. Welcome to the immortals club! Don’t tell me Mads hasn’t introduced you to Laf yet.”

“I haven’t,” James told him, and rolled his eyes when Hercules ignored him.

“Laugh, you said? What kind of name is that?” John was thinking of Greek myths, too, thinking of magic and if he had just met the being who begat a demigod.

“No, no, _Laf_. He’s our token foreigner, except for you now. _Lafayette_!” Hercules grabbed his arm and dragged him along as he went off shouting. James followed at a sedate pace. When John gestured for him to catch up, in the middle of laughing at a crude joke Hercules made, James smiled in a funny backwards way that looked like a frown, and John’s head filled up with memories of the Revolution. John smiled back at him helplessly.

 

 

**VII. Garden**

Once the sun began to set, Thomas left the feast and its mess of activity for his gardens. His home, rather. “Hello, darlings,” he greeted the poison ivy and the poison oak twined together around the ornate iron eastern gate. “Keeping everything safe for me?” He held a hand close so the plants could curl towards and around his fingers, purring like contented cats.

“Of course,” the poison ivy said.

Poison oak fluttered its leaves. “No one’s bothered us for months.”

A tendril of poison ivy attempted to reach for Thomas’ face, then settled for his sleeved wrist. “Have those fae of yours become smarter, Thomas?”

“Unlikely, though they should be terrified of you two.” Thomas stroked a thumb over each of their leaves, sending them both purring again.

They retreated from his hand and uncurled from the gate’s joined doors so Thomas could pass through. “Tell creeper hi for me!” the poison ivy called. “We always get mixed up.”

“Anything for you, darling,” Thomas promised as he slipped through and the vines closed the gate behind him.

As he walked deeper in upon the grassy, stone-dotted walkway, he allowed himself to be bombarded by voices. Every plant he passed swayed and shouted out to him, waving leaves and shaking branches, a few launching flowers in his direction. One milk thistle leaned its tall frame onto the path and twirled its knife-filled stem at him. As he came to a stop, a branch from the rosemary bush beside it stretched out to skim his ankle. “Have fun at your silly feast?” the milk thistle asked.

“Eating!” shrieked a witch hazel shrub from a distance. “Disgusting!”

“Don’t let the fly trap hear that from you,” Thomas warned, then addressed the milk thistle. “It was fine. It would have been better if everyone hadn’t been fawning over the human.”

“Human!” all the plants surrounding him yelled in distress, including the oak tree shuddering, as if struck by a harsh wind.

“Is that awful fire beetle going to have _progeny_ with it?” the milk thistle asked, its bristling leaves curling in upon themselves in disgust. The witch hazel began shrieking in earnest, and somewhere he could hear the hydrangeas crying.

“Thankfully, no. They’re both male.”

The plants sagged in relief and allowed him to continue on after a bit of cooing and flattery. The primary path curled towards the center of the gardens, where Thomas lived under a gazebo large enough to host its own feast. Thomas kept several of the quieter plants here, the cacti and the grasses and the stubby shrubs. The gazebo, carved from Old Kingdom wood, was surrounded by seven foot tall rose-of-sharon hedges, their red, white, and blue flowers perking up with only a soft “good evening, Thomas” as he approached. He almost walked into the gazebo, stopping to have a short conversation with the sprig of larkspur growing by the entrance, which complained bitterly about the uninspiring conversation it received from the other plants, when a distant screaming followed by pained shouting made him pause.

The larkspur groaned. “Don’t _tell_ me.”

“Jefferson!” came another shout, less distant. “Jefferson, call off your fucking rabid plants! _Ow_!”

Thomas leaned against the gazebo’s entrance and waited, the larkspur snickering at his feet.

Hamilton stumbled into the safety provided by the hedge five minutes later, disheveled and bleeding from more than a dozen small cuts. The milk thistle had definitely struck him across the face. His fists were clenched tight, his body trembling with such rage that Thomas was half-impressed he hadn’t gone up in flames. The half-fae rubbed at his face for a moment until jerking away with a cut-off noise of frustration. “I’m going to have rashes for _weeks_ ,” he bemoaned. “I’m going to have them _everywhere_. One of your horrible vines snaked their way up my sleeve.” He shivered and rubbed at his arms. “You’d think after being betrothed to someone you’d tell your minions to back off, but I suppose you’re chivalrous like that.”

“Betrothed?” the larkspur gasped.

“Is that what you came here to discuss?” Thomas asked, affecting boredom as Hamilton stomped past him and into the gazebo, flopping down onto the closest seat, a linen armchair. Rather than follow, Thomas turned and stayed in the doorway, the larkspur leaning in to keep watch on the proceedings.

“Yes, and we’re going to discuss it, because I was just mauled by your vicious plants, and that deserves at least a minute from your pompous ass, especially since we’re both stuck in this mess.” Hamilton was fierce, the blood on his face lending his expression steel, as if his fire could temper rather than consume. His future husband.

Thomas allowed himself to acknowledge it. His future husband, as prickly as any thistle or bramble, uncontrollable and arrogant and unbending, intolerable with his quick mouth and lack of forethought. The man that escaped to the human world hours after the betrothal announcement. A worthless half-blood. How had Angelica seen anything growing here except for the already preexisting seeds of hatred and spite?

“Fine,” Thomas sighed, sitting on another nearby chair. “Do you want to talk about how this will never work first, or how we’ll never make it to the wedding without you burning me to death?”

Hamilton snorted, leaned forward, relaxing his cut hands on his knees. “How about your selfish assumption that you’re correct because you’ve never bothered to think from any other perspective?”

 

 

**VIII. Sleep**

The cottage wasn’t as small as it appeared from the outside next to the towering trees. Inside, Aaron needed a wide space for storage of ingredients and finished potions and for the brewing of them, and the living room was large enough to dance in, and both he and Theodosia had separate rooms. The gray wood was dull in the gloom outside, but it seemed half-lovely in the light from the banked fire. The closed-off rooms were claustrophobic at first, but after a month they began feeling more cozy than not, like an animal’s warm winter hideaway.

Maria was sharing Theodosia’s bedroom, though Theodosia rarely slept in it and that included tonight. Theodosia probably lingered for hours during feast days, not returning until morning.

Night crept on. The dreams tossed Maria back and forth, the roof closed in until it suffocated, and a hand reached around her throat tight as if he could pluck her pretty flower head off her pretty stem body. The shadows welcomed her without her meaning to embrace them. The same had happened at the feast. The King’s invitation couldn’t be refused, no matter the misgivings, and Maria had spent the hours hiding in Aaron’s shadow, invisible, as the people greeted him and he sighed and murmured comments meant for her. Shadows were the air the night breathed, everywhere, and it was easy for her to slip back into the old, dangerous games of hide’n’seek. She touched her cheek. Despite the decaying curse removed weeks ago, it throbbed, threatening her even in absence.

Aaron slept, restless but deep; Maria slipped under the crack in the door and into the deadness outside.

The Old Kingdom . . . the Old Kingdom was a faint, sour memory. Her memory in general was an incomplete hum, an off-note tune that fell out of her head. That’s why her husband had to tell her so many things: names, dates, directions. (“Can’t keep a thought in your head, can you?” he’d say.) The forest was a nightmare in the dark, no moon or crickets, silent like a wolf’s jaw threatening to snap around her throat. When she was a girl, however long ago before she was forced to stop pretending she knew anything about anything, she would try to climb the thick trunks and fall down, over and over. She was always bad at learning lessons.

She had never met a King before. He’d been noisier than she had imagined with much wider eyes, too-broad shoulders and thick wrists, so earthly that his ancestors must have been primitive earth spirits with their slow, mountain-moving magic rather than the air spirits his weathering implied. Aaron’s must have come from some plant spirit, poised and intricate. Fiddly things, ancestors, when mothers and fathers were blurry and ancient themselves. Her mother had . . . Her father . . . Well, the first person, as far back as she could go, with a memory slightly clear in her mind was him, her husband.

Moving through shadows was like sliding through thin, sticky resin. Disorienting, at first. Suffocating, later. But the longer and longer underneath, you forget colors and unfiltered sounds and easy movement, and you want to stay underneath.

The sun was still engulfed by the horizon like a plucked citrus fruit when the throne staggered into view, invisible until her steps took her almost stumbling upon it and the lump lounged across it. The lump snored loudly, else a corpse would have been likely. Snuggled in robes – a touch along the lining of the fabric revealed it as a cape, longer and fuller than any winter’s cloak – and something spiky sitting atop the head – a trace of its lines, sharp edges, points, baffled until her thumb ran over the contours of a gemstone larger than her fist – a crown.

The King snored hideously and flicked a wrist weakly, slurring an off-note tune under his breath.

Former King. Another ghastly snore, ending in a rude snort.

Nothing much to see.

“You lost, little one?” her husband had asked, once upon a time. “It isn’t safe to walk alone in this part of the forest, you know.”

Aaron spoke of the forest as if it had been brighter once, but the shadows felt the same. The earth didn’t care about their movements, it lay itself to sleep after the beginning. Old King, too fussy and dramatic; New King, too stable and restrained. Different expectations, same potential. Different story, same words. Her body slunk deeper into a corner. A buzzing around her scalp scolded her for wondering about things too big for her. The small, disparate pieces were hers. The little twigs on the ground and the leaves, the lack of a breeze. The phantom at her back, the tone of voice when she was addressed. The potions and the salves Aaron made for her.

But if she could—

But maybe she—

But no.

 

 

**-Interlude-**

Angelica foresaw; Eliza empathized; Peggy transported; Maria survived; Theodosia . . . was. She was nothing more than herself, in the myriad varieties she could be. She was a woman arguing philosophy, she was a teenager grinning passionately, she was a child twirling in careless circles. Theodosia, the Never-Quite-Anything. In her insightful moments, which were many no matter what her age, she realized how difficult she must be to befriend. Fae were accustomed to centuries of consistency and to change that was gradual, natural. The revolution was a single sleeping draught, and the Kings shared the same name. Fae pretended at differences, mistaking passing seasons as “differences.” Old Theodosia was calm, prim, sly, confident; young Theodosia was loud, loose, open, insecure. Who could handle such differences, especially when they could occur within seconds? They could humor her, they could like her, they could befriend parts of her – but not all the parts of her together.

That’s what made Aaron special. That’s why she loved him. Like a father sometimes, like the dearest of friends other times, always precious, always a piece of her heart, her shred of consistency in her world of flux.

The fae lived in a story with destinies inked down forever, which was perhaps the reason humans forgot about them long ago. Humans did not have destinies. When James Hamilton fled, it surprised Angelica as much as anyone else. She had seen Rachel crying and crying, but she hadn’t known why. Theodosia had known, had seen it in his eyes for weeks. He had looked down at Theodosia, who was always small when she visited Alexander, and warily, cautiously said, “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”

Theodosia nodded. “Very nice.”

“Too nice,” he muttered.

Stories and destinies were lovely until you were trapped in them. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing new, stuck in cycles, stuck like Theodosia but in slow, agonizing slides. Always, always, always.

 

 

**IX. Wounds**

“Maria, could you hand me the . . .? Thank you,” Aaron said, grinding some leaf or another into a paste. “You’re lucky you’re half-human, because these remedies would have half the effect on a full-blooded fae. You would be suffering for weeks rather than a day or two.”

Maria resisted the urge to melt into Aaron’s shadow as he lectured Alexander, who moaned in pain, covered in rashes and blisters from head to toe. He looked puffy and splotchily pink, red, and orange, strange and unknown like how she had imagined humans to be before Alexander’s own father lived with the fae for that brief period.

“Don’t scratch!” Aaron reprimanded.

“Then hurry up already, come on! I’m going mad,” Alexander groaned, rubbed at his arms and flexing his fingers.

“You know how—”

“Yeah yeah, I’m stupid and impulsive and irresponsible and the whole spiel. Hurry _up_.”

Aaron sighed.

Alexander clenched his fists, brushing away the occasional spark that popped up, and turned his full focus on Maria with sudden force. “Are you that woman that Burr turned me away for?”

The potionmaker huffed. “You make it sound as if I rejected a romantic liaison with you.”

“I _had_ been betrothed to Jefferson not an hour before. I’d take anyone over him, even you and your petty self-ostracization in this death pit of a forest.”

“It’s not so bad,” Maria whispered.

Alexander’s attention settled on her again, startling in its ferocity, the opposite of Aaron’s withheld coolness or her husband’s blurry, indiscriminate instructions. “Why do you think that?” he enquired.

“Me?” Maria’s feet planted themselves firmly to the wooden floorboards, taking root so they would not take unintentional steps back. She was being addressed. She hadn’t meant to speak up at all, let alone be acknowledged.

“Yes,” Alexander said and leaned forward, forgetting the itching and the sparks, to not examine her but to wait on her words as if she were a wayward friend from a bygone era. “You expressed an opinion, and I’d like an explanation.”

She fumbled a bit, her sentences falling wrong from her brain to her mouth. She said something about shadows and feeling humble and quiet and the abandoned bits in the trees and Seabury’s splash of color and sound. She was unconvinced she had made much sense, but Alexander had nodded without his attention flagging until Aaron finished the salve and informed Alexander of when and how to apply it. He thanked her for her time, told Aaron, “You should learn to look on the bright side like her, Burr,” and left, already scratching madly at his arms. She watched after him until the forest swallowed him up.

“We’re not all like Reynolds,” Aaron said, washing his utensils in a shallow bowl.

 _Petty self-ostracization_.

“Then why are you out here, alone?”

“What?” Aaron turned to her, eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

Maria blinked. Had she said something? Had she—? Oh. A hot flicker of fury tightened her throat. “Then why are you out here, alone?” she snapped.

Aaron frowned and began to raise a hand placatingly. “I don’t. I have Theo—”

Something deep in Maria’s chest broke in half. “Theodosia’s never here!” she screamed.

Ice, the freezing anxiety Maria knew deeper than her shadows, crawled over Aaron’s limbs, locked him tight in stillness, his face blank like an empty sky, as if he was standing alone in the room, as if he didn’t notice Maria biting her lips until they were red with blood and trembling, skin singing loud until she shook out her _bones_. “There’s no need to—”

“Yes, there is!” Maria cried. “If everyone’s so lovely, why are you here? Why are you making yourself miserable never speaking to anyone unless spoken to and sitting in your room doing nothing and talking as if no one remembers you exist?”

“ _They_ left _me_ ,” Aaron said in a soft, even tone.

“They moved on. What did you do?”

Aaron pressed his lips into a thin line.

“What did _you_ do?” she repeated louder, her voice stripped raw.

Abruptly, the world flooded with blinding light, as if a lightning bolt landed in the middle of the room and stuck there, illuminating every line and curve and surface into glowing, cloudlike whiteness, too much for eyes to bear. Before Maria could clap her hands over her face, it leaked away to a warm brightening like a summer’s sunray.

Maria whispered, “I thought you didn’t use magic.”

Slowly, Aaron shook his head. “I don’t.” Finally, his expression cracked open into gentle awe.

The light brightened again as Maria laughed and then darkened to its normal gloom when she crumbled into crying. Her legs gave out and dropped her to the floor on her knees, and Aaron hurried to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “There’s something wrong with me,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” Aaron rubbed her back, rocked them back and forth in soothing waves. “You did nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m sorry.” His tone steels. “I’m a hypocrite. But I’m not Reynolds.” He tilted her chin up. The worry that creased his brow suited him. His face was carved into easy lines for wide, deep emotions, but he had boxed himself into stiffness. It was unfair; he was irrational; how could he harm himself so? “May I give you something for your bloodied lip?” he asked.

“My—?” She flicked her tongue over her bottom lip, tasted the blood and pain. “Oh. Yes, you may.”

 

 

**X. Contest**

The entire garden buzzed by morning, shrieking and wailing in despair. “Tell us it isn’t so!” they all cried. “Anyone but him! Anyone but that horrid little _beetle_.” They shuddered. Even the cacti and the rose-of-sharon hedges murmured their concern, and the larkspur tsked in disappointed pity. Nothing comforted them or eased their dismay for a second, crying and screaming until Thomas closed out the voices and stomped out of the garden altogether.

The festivities had wound down and dispersed except for stray lanterns stuck in tree branches, distant music notes plucking the air, Lafayette playfully batting swords with the human, and James watching from the base of a nearby tree. “ _Bonjour_ ,” Lafayette called, smiling at Thomas while parrying the human’s strike. “Come to watch my victory over this mortal menace?”

“You’re too cocky for your own good,” the human yelled in indignation.

Lafayette raised a hand to stifle a pretend yawn, deflecting another blow. “You think so?”

Thomas snorted as the human bellowed and pushed Lafayette back, and they danced in sloppy circles, laughing and shouting. He sat down next to James to watch, the tree shifting its branches to shade his eyes without asking. “I thought humans needed to sleep every night,” he said to James.

“They do,” James confirmed, “but since John drank the health potion he hasn’t felt the need. No physical exhaustion either, since they’ve been competing throughout the night.”

“John?” Thomas repeated, glancing at his friend to find a bewildering gleam in his eye. “First names with humans? You’re not Rachel Faucette.”

His eyes remaining on the fighting pair, James shrugged. “Hardly. I might have brought him here, however accidentally, and he may be interesting – there’s a war for freedom in the human world he mentions whenever he can, and it’s fascinating – but I—”

The horrific realization dawned on Thomas. He grasped James’ arm and said sternly, “James Madison, you _cannot_ be Rachel Faucette. I refuse to indulge this madness.”

James pried his hand off. “That’s what I was saying before you interrupted me. Of course I’m not Rachel Faucette. I’m not in _love_ with him.”

“I can’t believe this,” Thomas went on. “This is Dolley all over again. You meet, you pretend you don’t have feelings for a minute or two, and then you’re unbearable with how lovesick you are.”

“As if you’re one to talk. At least I realized Dolley was taken before I did anything foolish. You proposed to Martha before you barely knew her name.” James said, his reserved expression chipping away under each successive wave of embarrassment. “You’re marrying Hamilton. Isn’t that worse than any ridiculous feelings I might have for a human?”

“You admit you have feelings then! At least Hamilton is half-intelligent,” Thomas huffed, realizing too late he was defending his arch nemesis. “From what you’ve told me, that human of yours would be dead if not the for you, and will probably throw himself into another mortal injury as soon as he leaves.”

“If I have feelings, then you certainly have feelings. Mulligan told me you were in an irritable fit the entirety of Hamilton and I’s time away. If you didn’t care as you profess, then you would have been happy he left and compared him to his father running away with his tail between his legs.”

Thomas opened his mouth, ready for his next retort – _I’m being forced to make this work; it isn’t a choice; you have a choice_ – when bright, raucous laughter interrupted him, and both he and James jumped at the sight of Lafayette and the human, Laurens, leaning on each other and holding their stomachs, unable to control their glee, their swords abandoned in the grass. Both he and James waited for the two to acknowledge them, especially as they hadn’t been quiet near the end, but neither fighters spared a speck of their attention.

They sighed in relief and relaxed.

James fiddled with his sleeve. “I’m not going to do anything as inane as turn myself into a tree, I assure you,” he murmured.

“History repeats itself,” Thomas said. “A milk thistle is a milk thistle, a larkspur is a larkspur, a human is a human, and a fae is a fae. Life doesn’t change. It only grows anew.”

James looked away from him and towards Laurens, his lips scrunched into a self-conscious frown but his gaze unwavering. “You think we can’t change?”

“Take a look at yourself, first. You haven’t changed.”

James’ eyes flickered down. “Perhaps not.”

Thomas shrugged and rose to his feet. “We continue. Good luck with your human, Rachel.”

“Yours, too,” James said, the tease quirking his mouth up at one end.

“He’s only _half_ worthless, thank you very much,” Thomas pretended to sneer. A confused, newfound lightness clawed at the deep-rooted darkness, and he did not pretend that the struggle was anything but temporary.

 

 

**XI. Revolution**

After John and Lafayette discarded their swords, they gestured for James to sit with them in the sunlight. A fairy-fae woman named Peggy appeared out of thin air and joined them, and the morning devolved into a flurry of questions and answers. The obvious subject of magic, from Peggy’s sister Eliza’s empathy to changing ages to transfiguration to Lafayette’s complete abstainment, segued into the “mundanity” of immortality, the health benefits included, and how impeccably, unerringly attractive they all were. (And he had thought _Alex_ was pretty.) John asked about the monarchy; it had changed hands once in their remembered history. John asked about laws; none were written, none were proclaimed. John asked about crime; the fae frowned and asked in return, “What is ‘crime?’”

John laughed, his go-to response. “You mean to say no one does anything wrong?”

Peggy tapped her chin. “Hercules tricked Angelica and Eliza into taking a potion that made them both infatuated with Alex for a while.”

“Alexander has burned down parts of the forest for years, including a large portion of Thomas’ garden,” James contributed.

“James Hamilton left Rachel Faucette when Alex was an infant,” Lafayette said.

Peggy hummed in consideration. “James _Reynolds_ curses his poor wife, Maria.”

“James _Monroe_ tried to challenge Alex to a duel despite Alex’s weaker constitution.” Lafayette grinned at John. “No offense to humans’ weaker constitutions, _mon ami_.”

“Let’s not even touch the subject of James _Callender_.” Peggy made a gagging sound.

“Wait, wait,” John interrupted. “Do you name all the assholes ‘James’ here?” He looked to the James in their circle, who wore a vaguely embarrassed smile, and he thought the man didn’t appear loathsome. Intelligent, too quiet, yes – John wanted to goad him into speaking; this wasn’t a war, this wasn’t politics, this was fantasy, anyone could say anything here – but not loathsome.

“Don’t worry, John Adams is awful as well,” Peggy told him, chipper.

James cleared his throat. “I would like to think my character is not so petty or disdainful as the others mentioned.”

John asked about their “Revolution” next, which led to him talking about his. He flung himself into the subject with gusto, detailing the wrongdoings of England and the reluctance of France and the pitiful condition of the Continental Army. As he always did, his mind stuck when he came to slavery. Hundreds, thousands of slaves, so many he had seen with his own eyes as he had grown up. Human beings broken into animals . . . He lost track of time in the midst of his diatribe, in the passion of the ideals and the future that could be, until there was a slight lull between his expositions.

“You care a great deal about these people and your country,” James said. Lafayette and Peggy had left some indeterminate amount of time ago, leaving them alone in the hot patch of the afternoon sun. John expected veiled condescension worse than his father’s, but James’ voice edged soft with sincerity. “We’ve never had such problems here.”

No laws, no crime, no problems! Paradise without any trying. John gritted his teeth, unable to stop the resentment rising in the back of his throat. “What I wouldn’t give to bring that understanding and peace back home with me.”

James shook his head. “It wouldn’t mean anything if you did.”

“What do you mean by that?” John spluttered. “Equality is the key to the future. If we could harness that power, fairness and cooperation—”

“No,” James interrupted. “When you earn your equality, it will mean everything, but ours means nothing. We are what we are, and while there is power in that, the much greater power lies in choice and the fight for that choice. We’ve never fought for anything.”

John’s heart pounded like a cannon ball against his chest, his breath tight from how full his chest was with the intense barrage of emotions and thoughts, skipping his brain and funneling straight to his heart and his fingers like a battle song. _America_ , he thought. Stodgy politicians, stubborn gentlemen, cruel soldiers, desperate poverty, diseased water, thin fires, ostentatious balls, polite vitriol, dying children, constant ignorance, repressed love, and _pain_. So riddled with indignities and malevolence that the good could not be separated from the bad, and he loved it. He couldn’t love who he wanted, he couldn’t convince the plantation owners to free their slaves, and life ran so short through his fingers that he knew he couldn’t win the war, and he loved it, the great untidiness of his homeland. Tears brimmed his eyes within a second. “I’ll die fighting,” he stated resolutely. Why was he here? He had never intended to stay, but everything that had fascinated him before seemed silly now. Who cared of magic and immortality and the ridiculous simplicity of it? He grabbed James’ shoulder and pulled him into a crushing hug. “Thank you for reminding me,” he said, and he felt James nod against his shoulder and tentatively hug back.

 

 

**XII. Furlough**

Washington watched the sky fill with clouds that blocked out the sun and began raining. He drew his cloak around his shoulders, checked his hat was angled correctly, and sat among the muddy roots of a tree, straight-backed but as relaxed as he could be in the wet heat as afternoon drew on.

“Feeling lost and sad, love?” Angelica asked, appearing as the rain intensified into steady, relentless sheets.

“No,” he said as she sat down beside him and draped the cloak around her, despite the fact she was already soaking to the bone and he was almost dry. “Thoughtful only. The storm conjured itself, and I encouraged it a bit and dissuaded it from throwing lightning. I’d be happy never to hear another roll of thunder in my life.”

“Sometimes when I listen to your heartbeat, that’s what I hear instead of the usual thumps.”

“What about now?”

She leaned in to press her ear to his sternum and listened. “Thunder, I’m afraid,” she said with mocking pity. “Seems you’re rather too impressive and kingly to be ignored. A shame; from your looks I would have imagined a busybody croptender. Everyone you know must be devastated you became so important.”

“My Queen certainly is. You should hear how often she denounces me.”

“Sounds like a lovely woman.”

They smiled at each other and then lapsed into silence.

Above, the clouds swirled in discontented masses, kicking up high winds that Washington eased whenever they grew too vicious. With Angelica under his cloak and the rain swept sideways into his face by the wind, he wondered why he bothered with preserving his dignity. Perhaps long ago when he summoned lightning bolts for fun some might have been intimidated, but what dignity was there in clomping around, making a ruckus and announcing his presence wherever he stepped? Honestly.

Angelica began humming one of Eliza’s favorite songs, a long, passionate ballad, and Washington manipulated the wind to match the tune, whistling on the high notes, rustling the leaves to mimic a vibrato, and, with reluctance, calling forth a thunderclap at the climax. Angelica smirked as she finished the last set of chords.

“Did you talk to Burr during the feast?” Angelica asked.

“No,” Washington admitted. “I did see Peggy disarm Lafayette, although I think her use of teleportation counts as cheating.” Angelica shifted, facing him more directly. He cut her off before she could begin. “Don’t start on me about mending fences when you’ve never attempted to mend one yourself. When you and Thomas are in the same vicinity, you’re worse than Alexander.”

“Thomas Jefferson isn’t worth my time,” Angelica said with a scowl.

“And Aaron Burr is worth _my_ time?”

“Maria Lewis is.”

“I know nothing about the woman except for her name. Obviously you know her much better than I, so why should it fall to me?” Another thunderclap boomed overhead, the air darkening as the clouds thickened into brooding gray swathes and the rain streamed down their faces despite the tree and his hat’s protection. Washington cursed under his breath and forced the storm down to its previous reasonable level.

Angelica swept her hair from where it plastered against her face. “I thought you would enjoy a change a pace, something new happening.”

“Why would I? I have everything I’ve always wanted. The people are happy. I’m happy. What else is there to concern ourselves with?” Hurriedly, he put up a hand as her face closed off sharp and sudden. “I didn’t mean—” He struggled for the words, but she waited and allowed him to struggle.

When they had first met – not known of one another’s names or exchanged niceties but _met_ – he had been experimenting with earthquakes. She approached, surefooted, and told him they were betrothed by whimsies higher than herself, and he had asked her, confused, why that was important, since she could see everything all the time. She had said, “This is more than that,” as if there could be _more_ to seeing the future than seeing it. But they had sat, and he had shown her how he could make apples fall out of trees with his earthquakes while she said nothing, her lips tilted up in the tragic, fake way that tugged at his chest. He paused and laid a hand over hers and asked her if she was all right, and she whispered, “Haven’t you ever wanted _more_?” He had. Of course he had. Constantly. Infinity wasn’t enough for him. Then she laughed. “I suppose it truly is ordained.”

But millennia had passed, and there were no monsters to fight as he had imagined, no looming threat to conquer.

“I meant . . .” Washington gestured to the sky as the storm broke up, skittered off, and the rain turned from shower to drizzle to nothing. “I don’t believe there’s anything _more_ out there, no matter how you might wish different, and there’s nothing to do for it.”

Anger flashed in her face, frustration, pity, blankness, and settled on a small, stable sadness that lingered in the corners of her eyes and her mouth and the set of her jaw. After a moment, she leaned on his chest and watched the grass.

 

 

**XIII. Whimsy**

For the first time in her life, far more serious and absolute than the minor unexpected events such as James Hamilton’s disappearance, Angelica did not know what came next. A patch wasn’t missing, not a piece of dialogue skipped, not a gesture unobserved, but _chunks_ the size of days gone, like an ancient beast had sank its teeth through time and tore it apart, as if Angelica were climbing a tree and the branches had begun snapping the moment she grasped them. She saw—she saw her husband saying _There’s nothing to do for it_ , she saw an adolescent Theodosia greeting her, she saw – what else did she see? – Madison frowning at the surface of the scrying pool, Alex saying – something about – _I’m trying to make this work_ – the darkened forest – a shadow – a light—

She tightened her hold on George’s arm and closed her eyes against the threatening tears. “I’ll speak to Maria,” she said, kissing him and then traveling down into the Old Kingdom. Surely, Maria was the next step? George had said it himself: why should it fall to him? It was Angelica, after all, who had known her from the distance of visions for centuries, ducking into shadows and hanging her head while James Reynolds spewed his venom, sometimes more than metaphorically, bruises and bright eyes and rare smiles.

The last of her limited premonitions passed as Theodosia, in her adolescent form, bounded from one enormous root to the next and waved. “Hello, Your Excellency. What whimsies have brought you here today? Are you looking for Aaron?”

“No. Maria.” Angelica restrained her question of, “Where is she?” because it would have tipped her hand. She had never asked such an obvious question in her life; she always knew the answer beforehand. From Theodosia’s question, she could deduce that Aaron wasn’t at the cottage where he usually was, which meant he was out collecting ingredients, so Angelica asked instead the more covert, “Does she go out gathering with Burr often?”

Theodosia performed a lazy pirouette down to another root and shook her head. “Aaron doesn’t let anyone accompany him, not even me. He says it interferes with the purity in the ingredients, that intent and focus during gathering is as important as the ingredients themselves.”

Angelica nodded absently, thanked her, and continued on. Five minutes later, she knocked on the cottage door to receive no answer. When she opened the door, she found no one in the entire place, though she called and reassured the shadows she hadn’t arrived with ill intent. Where was she? Angelica pressed her fingers to her temple and pressed and pressed, searching for the answer. She should have been here! Maria was quiet, shy, struggled with autonomy without Reynolds demanding this or that. It made no sense for her to leave the safe walls of the cottage without Burr or at least Theodosia. What else was there in this dark place, except for—

The Old King George.

Chasing away her doubts, she traced her way through the abandoned paths and down into the heart of the Old Kingdom, where the foliage and gloom grew into thick, impenetrable clouds. She didn’t need Jefferson’s abilities to hear the _Hello, traitor queen_ , they whispered in a rustle, clinging to her dress and breathing an unwelcome chill onto her skin. “Maria!”

There, in the middle of a circle unblemished by weeds or thorny bushes, sat the throne, as pristine as the day they had left it, and the Old King, as overwrought in dramaticism in sleep as he had been awake, as heavily adorned in his baubles and jewels that shone in the nonexistent sunlight. Still the same vain bastard. “Maria!” she called again, louder.

“Shh,” cautioned a voice in her ear. “You’ll wake him.”

Angelica whirled around to face Maria. The other woman did not spare her a glance, staring past her towards the snoring former King. The tight panic in Angelica’s chest loosened. “Don’t worry, he can’t wake up,” she said.

“Anyone can wake up,” Maria stated, drifting past to peer into the King’s face. He sniffled and turned his head, his crown not slipping an inch. “I’m not awake.”

“You’re awake,” Angelica replied, her words hesitant as she registered they were talking in levels, except she was unsure which levels.

“No,” Maria whispered, almost too low to hear. “You’re thinking of the woman in your visions.”

“I haven’t seen you in my visions.” That alarm shrieked again in the back of her head. She didn’t _have_ any visions. She was blind, blind and deaf without warning. _Gone_. Maria could destroy her with this information. Her visions were half of who she was: decisive, intelligent, reassured.

But Maria traced a circle on the back of her hand and refused to look at the Queen. “Of course you haven’t. I’m not the same as her. She’s who I could be.”

“Could?” Angelica repeated. What a strange word.

“I could have run away. I realize that now.” She traced a triangle and tilted her head at the Old King. “He could wake up.” Finally, she looked at Angelica, albeit at her feet. “You could, too. We all could.” Slowly, Maria tipped her head towards the blocked sky. Around them, the air began to brighten as if someone had cleared a path and spilled life into this land of the dead, the forest spontaneously alive with a feeling like a warm tug in the stomach, the stretch of a burning smile, the dizziness of whirling for joy, like _home_. Maria laughed. “I didn’t know I could create light!”

 _I didn’t know you could either_.

 

 

**XIV. Farewell**

“How does it decide what to show?” John asked as he leaned closer to the surface of the scrying pool, which displayed the bustle of a cramped group of buildings John had identified as “Philadelphia.” Horses and carts trotted by in thick traffic, surrounded by a mass of humans waving their arms and carrying supplies and pushing each other around.

James shrugged, his gaze focused on the light hitting the water than the image upon it, as the narrowness of the streets summoned an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. He could not imagine anyone willingly trapping themselves in that cage of stone. He couldn’t see a single tree or clearing. How could the humans bear it? “No one knows, not beyond the assumption that these scenes must be points of interest somehow.”

John tilted his head to smile at him. “Good to know that not even immortals have everything figured out.”

“Humans tend to learn that and quickly become unimpressed with us,” James said, returning the smile without meaning to. (Damn Thomas for knowing him too well!) “What’s magic and immortality without answers?”

“Enough to save my skin, apparently.” John patted himself on the chest, and although it passed the human by, James could feel the wards wrapped around John, testing the strength of his palm, processing if the motion was a threat, and then fading to vigilant dormancy again. “Who knows how many times these failsafes you plastered onto me will save me during the war, not to mention that health potion from before. You’re sure that potion was only a cough remedy?”

“Those failsafes are called wards; they are my specialty. And yes, I’m sure. I’ve had a chronic condition since I was small. A decaying curse missed its target and hit me instead, and I’ve always been a bit under the weather since.”

“Good to know you’re not infallible.”

The conversation died as John returned to staring at the pool and its glimpse into that other world and its clocks.

“Has it been a day and a half? It feels as if I’ve been here for weeks.”

“I suppose it did feel as if the sun sank faster in your world. I thought it a product of paying closer attention to the passage of time.”

“Maybe that’s my problem, too.” Those eyes locked back onto James, sharp with curiosity. (He would have had fire like Alexander, chaotic yet purifying.) “Did you like it, while you were searching for Alex? The colonies?”

James pointed at Philadelphia. “I did not like that aspect of it.”

Instead of drooping in discouragement, John surged forward with a rush of new energy. “You should see South Carolina. That’s where I’m from. You wouldn’t like Charleston, but my father owns a plantation. It’s a beautiful, awful place. The countryside outside it is untouchable, hills growing up into the Appalachians, sliding down into the ocean. You’ve never seen the ocean, have you?” At James’ head shake, John’s grin stretched his face into a disproportionate picture of joy, startling in its ugliness, its imperfection, in how preciously _unique_ it was. John clutched James’ arm. “It’s magnificent! Unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s powerful, inexorable, like the land or sky, except it’s never placid or docile for a moment, cutting forward again and again. It’s a force of nature that never sleeps, never ceases reminding you of its existence. I could show you one day. After the war.”

Leave? Humans left. Hot-headed half-bloods like Alexander left. Fae stayed. Fae visited and never lingered a second longer than necessary. He was . . . “You’ll have to survive the war in order to show me,” James said.

John’s mouth curled into a smirk. “Is that agreement I’m hearing?”

James attempted to suppress another smile and failed in doing so.

“I’ll wear you down, don’t you worry,” John said nonchalantly. “Surviving the war will be a cinch with these wards, as long as I don’t get shot by a magic bullet. Are there magic bullets?”

“According to Lafayette, yes, but he says his people covet their seclusion more than we do. I doubt any human could wrest such a weapon from them.”

“Great. Between hit deflection, enemy detection, no magic bullets, _and_ a promise to show you the sea, I have no excuses then. I’ll see you on the other side of the war.” With one last squeeze of James’ arm, he jumped into the pool, swallowed up by the water. No goodbye, no chance for James to say a word in reply.

He frowned at the surface of the scrying pool, then sat to trace his fingers through the water, disrupting Philadelphia’s streets, and whisper, “I will never understand you,” to the man who was long, long gone.

The image did not change, and his heart ached, but five, ten years was not too long to wait.

 

 

**XV. Willow**

In most situations when Alexander was irritated, he shot sparks from his fingers. However, in the midst of blind rage, he had been known to spit fire, singing his adversary and often setting the surrounding forest aflame. Alexander felt the scorching heat crawling up his throat as Jefferson complained loudly about the overgrown path and how far they had walked.

“Shut up!” Alexander hissed, a lick of flame escaping his mouth along with a trail of smoke. He paused to shove the anger down and continued, “I’m trying to make this work, asshole.”

The sting of the admission soothed as Jefferson’s haughty expression stuttered, though it reasserted itself after a second. “You’re making this abominable situation ‘work’ by dragging me through half the forest? Excellent.”

“Willful ignorance is an ugly look on you.” For all Jefferson’s flaws, he wasn’t stupid. Stupid men could not be hated with the same fervor that smart men could be, with the insatiable knowledge that a smart man _could_ be persuaded, if presented with the correct impermeable facts, which made one’s failing to do so twice as infuriating.

“You don’t need an affectation to look dreadful,” Jefferson sniped back. “You can’t even keep your hair in its tie.”

Alexander swallowed his insults and kept his eyes on the path. Three more minutes of walking. Jefferson, thrown off by the lack of reply, fell into a disgruntled silence full of sharp-edged glances at the side of Alexander’s face.

When they stepped into the clearing with the single dainty young weeping willow tree in its center, Alexander forgot for a moment Jefferson and why he had brought him here and ran forward with a beaming smile. The tree swayed in response, as if waving in a hello. That’s how Alexander had always interpreted it anyway. “Hi, mom.”

“Oh.” The quiet, slightly breathless exhalation turned Alexander from his mother to face his gobsmacked betrothed, who stared up at the willow with his mouth half-open. “Rachel Faucette.”

The closest of his mother’s leaves brushed over Alexander’s head. “What is she saying?” Alexander asked.

“You brought me to here to meet . . . your mother,” Jefferson said haltingly, sounding, for all Alexander’s implication of his accomplished intelligence earlier, like a thick-headed ignoramus. He shook his head at some unheard reply. “Over a hundred years.” A nod. “I’d expect it would.”

“What is she saying?” Alexander repeated with a snap.

Jefferson turned an inquisitive eye to the younger, his bearings returned with an additional lightness, an air of intrigue in the assessment of his gaze. “She’s reminiscing on the last time we met, when the King and Queen asked me to translate her explanation of her decision.” He glanced towards Rachel’s trunk, and, without making eye contact with Alexander, protested, “Do you have to make me say that?”

Alexander laughed and sat at the base of her trunk, gesturing for Jefferson to join him. “Come on now, you’re not easily embarrassed.”

They paused there, with Alexander’s chest warm at his mother’s relayed words and Jefferson standing above him, looking out of place and still. Alexander saw the slow revelation crawl through him, from tense shoulders to quirked mouth to the tightening around his eyes, and how those eyes shone with something – _new_. That word felt dangerous snaking through Alexander’s mind. He was witnessing the birth of something mysterious and unknown in Thomas’s mind and it was intoxicating. He sat next to Alexander.

In a low, respectful voice, Thomas said, “She told me she loves you, that she’s proud of you, and that she’s sorry for not being able to say so herself.”

Alexander smiled wider and leaned his head back against her trunk.

Careful, but with that casual bit of flame under his words, Thomas asked, “Are you using me?”

Alexander’s smile twisted into a coy grin. “I’m a multitasker at heart. Can’t I use you _and_ endear you to me by meeting the mother I haven’t spoken to directly since I was a child?”

The outrage that flitted across Thomas’s face faltered into a surprised laugh. “You bastard! You’re meeting every one of my garden plants and I get to count how many times they attempt to murder you.”

Rachel gathered her branches closer around them, leaves draped over their shoulders in fond contentment. Thomas paused and looked up into her boughs, suddenly stricken.

“What?” Alexander pried.

“Ridiculous.”

“What did she say?”

He shook his head, that shine in his eyes again when he looked back at Alexander. “Something terribly sentimental.”

 

 

**XVI. Regrowth**

Another cheer rose from the assembled crowd; no doubt Lafayette had jumped on a table or Eliza had plucked a particularly satisfying note from the air. For once, Burr felt the festivities invade his stoic spirit and raise it to match their elation, as he spun in a dance with his dear Theodosia, transitioning from lopsided ovals to elegant circles as she grew and shrank, always with a smile to match his joy.

“Has a year ever passed so eventfully before?” he mused aloud.

The cunning eyes of Theo as a young woman laughed at him with kindness. “You sound like Maria.”

“How could I not with her in my ear night and day?” They paused together to search her out with their eyes, and yes, there she was, spinning from crowd to crowd with a smile brighter than the sky. Imagine, once she was broken and mute on Burr’s floor, and now–!

They stood before Burr’s little gray cabin, dancing under lights. Where the trees once repelled such cheer with a stiff, looming grief, they now joyously spread their branches to welcome sun and warmth into their world again. Rather than hunkering and sad, Burr’s home appeared stately and calm, a stable place to lay one’s head down. It felt heady and every other fae seemed to agree, their dances loose and fast and their laughter unexpected and loud. The King rumbled the ground without care, the Queen spun with her eyes squeezed shut, even Theodosia and Maria tilting their heads slightly up as if soaking it all in with surprise. Burr couldn’t stop smiling, and perhaps he should have be more disturbed by that.

Theodosia danced away from him with a wave and a wink, and he leaned against the root of a spring-green, flowering tree to observe the celebrations from the sidelines.

From the shadow he cast, he felt a familiar hand on his shoulder and a giggle at his ear. “Did you see the newlyweds sneak off?” Maria whispered conspiratorially.

“Already off to sully the Old Kingdom, I presume.” He caught her hand and kissed it. “Indecent exposure or several fires, who knows yet.”

She glided into view, her eyes close and wide and _shining_. “You look happy,” she continued in a hush. “I never thought I’d see you so happy.”

 _I thought the same of you, my dear heart._ “I believe you’ve had that effect on us all. You mentioned the newlyweds, but you did see James, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t do a thing,” Maria insisted. “All I’ve been saying is – it’s silly, isn’t it? To act the way we do? James saw it before me. He planned to leave the moment John said goodbye.” And the moment the human had emerged from the scrying pool, James had clutched him to his chest desperately and kissed him soundly, then apologized profusely for the presumption with a blush burning on his cheeks while John laughed himself dizzy.

“Well, if you are determined to deprive yourself of the credit, then I must continue to keep giving it to you. How do you explain Angelica’s powers?”

Maria shrugged and began tugging him away from the root, towards the music and liveliness. “I just asked questions. I was sad and tired and scared; I wasn’t trying to do anything. Anyone could have asked her those things.” She leaned forward, her arms close around her neck. “You took me into your lonely house and helped me, so who says I can’t say _you_ inspired all this?” Holding him close, she looked up at the far branches.

He curled his arms around her waist and looked with her. Sunlight drifted down and flared in his eyes but he did not try to blink away the spots from his eyes. Hope stretched his tired heart so that it ached, but he only pulled her closer. “Maybe you’re right.”


End file.
